


At Least That's What You Said

by wisteria_prince



Category: Monster (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Drama, References to childhood trauma, child death (SIDS), this is just a really bad time, welcome to my grimmer character study feat. his dampened emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23808055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisteria_prince/pseuds/wisteria_prince
Summary: It was a lesson about holding onto things too tightly. Do so and you will break what you cherish. Grimmer could understand that much.But where are the stories for the children that don't hold onto anything at all?----An exploration of Grimmer's reflections on himself and his wife from the gentle beginning of their relationship to its sobering end.
Relationships: Wolfgang Grimmer/His Wife
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	At Least That's What You Said

**Author's Note:**

> Watched ep 49 of Monster for the first time and it shook me so here we are. The title of this fic comes from a track on Wilco's A Ghost is Born album since it reminds me of Grimmer and his wife a lot. I highly recommend giving a song a listen if you don't mind "experiencing the 5 stages of grief in 5 minutes" as a friend of mine put it. It's beautiful but chilling :'^))

There’s a children’s story that circulates every now and then. It’s about a small child who found a beautiful flower. The flower sat upright in a patch of dirt. It was one of many adorned in soft light in rows that mirrored church pews but something about it drew the child’s attention in more than any of the others. 

The flower had a kind of aura that bred excitement at a mere glance. This was an aura that needed to be shared.

They pulled it out of the earth by the stem, unknowingly severing the green stalk from the imperceptible roots. They clasped the top of it in the palm of their hand, holding tightly as not to lose it and they began to run back to a part of town where friends and family would be waiting. Petals fluttered to the ground, dampened by the sweaty heavy fist that caused their dispersion. By the time they arrive at home to show everyone, they open their palm and find that the flower they treasured was no longer pretty. It was battered and bruised, barely resembling a sense of the former glory it exuded underneath the rising sun and the morning dew. 

It was a lesson about holding onto things too tightly. Do so and you will break what you cherish. Grimmer could understand that much. 

But where are the stories for the children that don’t hold onto anything at all?

Where are the tales of young adults that can’t recognize the flower’s beauty like everyone else can? 

Grimmer wondered if there were ever stories about the youth who’d stare at flower beds blankly. Perhaps they’d pluck a plant or two because the child next to them told them to. They watched the gardner take a few hydrangeas to make a bouquet for her shop. They had seen a thief prick himself on the thorns of a bush as he stole a single rose from a field as a gift for his lover. 

They pick one themselves because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. 

They pull it out of the earth by the stem, squeezing until they can hear the audible snap that emphasizes its separation from the roots. They hold the top of it in their palm tightly as if something will inextricably change them because of the harsh reality of loss. They assume they will feel a connection to the countless others who have traveled this field who are conscious of the pressure they apply to the fragile external properties of the world. 

The wind blows blades of grass. They open their palm and without a word, allow the loose petals to catch onto the breeze while the remaining ones stick to calloused skin, tiny seeds, and pollen dust, like a dead butterfly whose wings are clipped to a taxidermy display case. 

The child yearns for a connection to a collective sense of pain but has no thoughts. Over time, he grows into an adult that knows there’s purpose in picking flowers but cannot conceive it. He does not know when he became this way. He does not remember. Something _made_ him like this. But more important than that is what will he do now that he knows he is different? How will he live knowing there is a realm of existence privy to others but not him? 

Perhaps he will choose to never set foot in the fields that others tread. 

Or maybe he will continue acting as he sees others do in the hopes that something will eventually spark in him as an indication that he is a part of a greater whole. 

Nevertheless, life moves on. 

When Grimmer was released from 511 Kinderheim, he left as a young man with very few memories intact. So much had happened to him and yet he retained so little. Everyday spent there was a gift and a curse. The concept of tomorrow pushed him away from the ills of yesterday but with the elapse of time came the inevitable degradation of his mind. 

It was there in that crumbling, abandoned building on the streets of East Berlin where he learned even recalling one’s true name was a privilege as opposed to a natural right. 

If asked, Grimmer could remember some details of the place. He could recall dimly lit corridors that stretched into an abyss and the chipped paint peeling off the cracks of walls and ceilings. He could envision the dusty iron fan blades that never quite conquered the summer heat but instead blew currents through musty rooms with broken bed rails and yellowed sheets. A small den contained a CRT television that displayed children’s programs in between bits of static. The rooms‘ accompaniment consisted of noisy floorboards that spoke of footsteps, doors with weakened hinges that would creak when opened, and the occasional cacophony of voices that bled into a dissonant orchestra of yelling and screaming before finding its resolve in sombering silence. 

Psychodynamic theory would suggest that beyond those fragments lay the untapped territory of what remains suppressed. 

He tried not to dwell on the past so much. For what he lost, he could make new memories. 

That’s what the spy training was for. 

When Grimmer started his job as a journalist for a printing press in East Germany, he realized that he would have to learn how to live like ordinary people. Fortunately, he made good use of the various books on the shelves of his apartment that he obtained throughout the course of his schooling. A majority of the texts were guides on human behavior, cognition, and social theories and almost all of them had a matching set of handwritten notes organized into file cabinets or memos closely tucked into the binding of the pages. He frequently studied the books like manuals as a descriptive measure: a view into how people generally operate. Unfortunately, none of the texts seemed to offer him an answer to how _he_ should operate. 

The newspaper industry gave him access to thousands of potential prescriptions every single day in a format Grimmer really liked: natural observation. 

People watching genuinely fascinated Grimmer ever since he was a child. Now that he was an adult, the multitude of interactions between his coworkers gave him plenty of entertainment but also plenty of lessons on how to behave normally. What facial expressions to make in what circumstances wasn’t always clear but he found interest in the range of emotions that others could effortlessly produce. 

One day he’d learn how to do it too. 

An easier task, surprisingly enough, was determining what he needed to do with his personal life. Rumors spread through the workplace of relationships in and outside of the company. Small talk revealed that a guy around his age should get married soon enough. Grimmer knew in the back of his mind that a marriage would make it easy for a man like him to hide his true occupation. 

One day, amongst stacks of paperwork and editorials, he met a girl. A girl who assuredly did not know how many times the man before her recited greetings in his head to gain the confidence to approach with a simple hello. 

She was a young reporter that often had her nose to the grindstone being a new transfer alongside just moving into the neighborhood, but Grimmer also knew her as the woman that occasionally stole glances at him across the way. 

From what he could tell, she had a bright personality that was further accentuated by conventional good looks and her intelligence was evident not solely in her work ethic but also in the formalities of her speech.

It only took a week or so for them to start talking regularly. 

Grimmer used to eat his lunch alone during breaktime in an unused room away from the company floor. But once this acquaintance of his stumbled upon the secret space, she never hesitated to join him. They discussed recent cases and usual mundanities. Hobbies and dreams that Grimmer had to learn to construct in a consistent manner so the answers he gave her would match the answers he told others. Out of all the things that stood out to him in these moments however, it had to be her soft laughter and childlike smile. 

He worried how she would take to his awkwardness at first, but he found something nearly delightful about her company. 

This was a sweet person. A person he could attempt to trust in some form. 

Grimmer unexpectedly left the office one day with her phone number on a sheet of scratch paper. He held it in his pocket and brushed the fringes of the page with his thumb. He didn’t know if what he felt was an urge to call out of desire or a need to call out of obligation but regardless a sort of obsession invaded his thoughts when he passed a nearby payphone on his way home.

She picked up on the first ring. 

He started seeing her outside of the breakroom regularly. 

Over time, photos of the two accumulated in a previously unused album on Grimmer’s desk with museum exhibits, cafe tables, and public parks serving as backdrops for various dates. Every week, he selected a different image to display in the wooden frame on his nightstand in an effort to keep the relationship fresh despite the unavoidable taste that it had always been a little stale. 

The most recent one was taken at her parent’s summer home near the coast. He stood up straight with a hand limply placed on her shoulder while she leaned into his taller frame, arms wrapped around his waist in a sort of hug. She was laughing. Grimmer’s face was slightly obstructed by the brim of his fisherman’s hat and the grainy texture of the image. 

He squinted at the photo in hopes he’d discover what kind of expression he made when her mother took the shot. 

Somewhere along the line, on a night where one of them drank too much wine, she told him it was a dream of hers to be like the princesses in the fairy tales she read in her youth. To meet her prince charming, fall madly in love and eventually start a family. She confessed that when she grew out of picture books, she thought she didn’t believe in those stories anymore. At least, not until she met _him_. 

Grimmer confessed he wasn’t sure if he read many fairytales as a child but that the prince in her dreams probably didn’t have dusty colored unkempt hair and a gangly body like the one sitting next to her. 

She thought that was funny. 

He wheezed out a breath that was probably misinterpreted as a laugh. 

Grimmer couldn’t tell if the tension crawling down his skin was an indication of his own uncertainty or the weight of her arms around his neck, hands dangling in the cold air above his back. He swallowed hard, face visually unresponsive. He liked her but only held the luxury to understand what she proclaimed with his mind but not his heart. After all, he’d be a fool to assume two years with this woman could overwrite decades of wrong. 

Months prior she said his silence was endearing but he was certain she couldn’t see it the same way now. 

But if this is what it meant to be normal, if her projections of whatever image she painted onto this man would make her happy, then he’d be her canvas for as long as she’d accept artwork on a broken easel. For as long as he could bear it. 

When she kissed him, he didn’t kiss her back. Not because they hadn’t done this before or he didn’t want to. Not because _he_ wanted to desperately pull away and tell her she was falling for a man that had a piece of him missing that may never come back. 

In the moment, he just didn’t know how. 

Her lips were warm and soft against his own. He closed his eyes and wondered if she felt a spark between the two of them. His heart stirred in his chest. 

He wondered if he could feel it too. 

Soon after, he found himself in a local jewelry store, staring at various engagement rings encased behind tempered glass. He chose to come early, at a time where the shop would have very few people so he could focus. So many types of glittering styles, metals, and carat sizes that didn’t mean anything to him. He regretted not asking her about her preferences nor paying enough attention to the accessories she wore often, but maybe it was better this way lest he ruin the surprise. 

He liked all of the options but hated how expensive each one was. But as he fixed his gaze on the cut of a particular diamond ring, he remembered how her face lights up whenever she smiles, from the rosy tint of her cheeks to the whiteness of her teeth. 

He checked the price tag once more and pretended it didn’t matter, reaching into his pocket to pull several marks out of his wallet. Marriage is a commitment but that’s okay. He saved paycheck after paycheck for the milestone that should change a man’s life forever. It was time. 

He proposed that evening after dinner. She said yes. 

Grimmer decided to let her plan every piece of the occasion because he thought that was a good idea in theory. It was her childhood dream and she seemed to enjoy the process far more than he did. But every now and then she’d ask for his input on simple things. 

_“Whatever you think is best dear.”_ It was a line he invented not to be dismissive but to keep her happy. For a while it did. 

An argument broke out over something trivial. He can’t remember what started it. Something about linens or invitations. Maybe it had to do with flowers. But he knew it probably went deeper than that. He remembered giving some kind of non-answer and she responded with a flash of anger. 

“I know what I want but _you_ never say what _you_ want! It’s like you never have an opinion on anything sometimes! It’s like all you do is spectate in life and you never decide anything for yourself!” 

He froze.

That was the first time he heard her yell anything at him in such a bitter tone before, let alone something so visceral. 

He opened his mouth but nothing came out. His words were lodged into the lump in his throat. All he could do was sit uncomfortably on the couch and stare back at her in disbelief. 

She murmured an apology and left the room. 

When she wasn’t around and he wasn’t swamped analyzing reports, Grimmer skimmed through several books about weddings, from how to take good pictures to following proper procedure. He learned the script by heart and watched tapes from television programs to know the order of events. Upon reading the last page of a book he borrowed from the library, he slammed the pages shut and banged his head on his desk. 

He knew what he was doing was so artificial but the day had to be perfect. He had to be perfect because he wanted nothing more than it to feel real. 

He read the same notes over and over, before work, during lunch, after dinner, and in the middle of the night when he’d jolt awake from a recurring nightmare. It was his handwriting but it wasn’t his thoughts. It wasn’t the words he was supposed to say at the altar. It was a list of concepts, schemas, and flavored text he borrowed from magazines and romance novels on her side of the bookshelf. 

He cursed himself for waiting the night before to painstakingly draft vows. Crumpled paper smudged with fountain pen ink collected in a nearby wastebasket until he deemed a block of prose sufficient and passed out from exhaustion. 

His wedding is a bit of a haze for him. He can remember the floral embroidered details of her custom made gown and the sheer fabric of sleeves that matched the tulle veil placed perfectly atop her head. He can remember the aesthetic working well with his rented tux as murmurs from the aisles in the chapel claimed the two looked beautiful next to one another. But even so, Grimmer knew that on their special day, she glowed in a way that could not complement the hollowness of his own eyes. When he recited the generic words of affection he wrote over night, he hesitated to stare deeply into hers, worried that she would gaze into his own and see nothing. 

Tears streamed down her face, an action he could not replicate. But in the cheers of new family members and coworkers during their embrace, he felt something wash over him. To this day it remains a sensation he cannot put into words. His wife called it joy. 

The rare, sweet taste of affect did not follow him into the honeymoon but for her sake, he could pretend it did. 

At first, married life didn’t seem to be much different from anything else aside from the guarantee that the same person he woke up to at home in the morning would be there at night. He was also able to indulge in her cooking more frequently, although he enjoyed making meals as well from time to time. 

Life fell into a routine, which wasn’t necessarily bad. 

She hadn’t even changed that much herself. He still recognized her as the kind, diligent woman he met at the company years ago, although lately she seemed more interested in homemaking than the news industry which was alright. If he had to bet money on who was more of a workaholic between the two of them, Grimmer was likely to admit it was him. Another thing that stayed more or less the same was that she remained relatively decent at listening. Not that Grimer ever had much to say. 

What he was doing to her wasn’t fair. She needed to know the truth. But what was there to explain when he couldn’t really understand much himself?

It was always harder to face this truth in the quiet of the night. 

“Wolfgang…” she said softly. That shouldn’t have sounded foreign to his ears. It was his name after all. 

“I love you.” She said it like she always did, voice dripping with honey in a way that would drive most men into euphoria. 

Every time Grimmer heard those words come out of her mouth, he’d say it back. That moment they were lying in bed with her body draped over his own was no exception. 

If only he knew how to say it with such sincerity as her. 

The phone in the periodicals department rang off the hook for weeks on end to the point where if his salary wasn’t docked and no one was around, Grimmer was certain he’d cut the cord from the electrical socket and throw the landline out the window. A rather tempting solution but he deemed the act highly unprofessional, deciding it was better to think of it as a busy season. Just when he thought he habituated to the constant droning, he reached underneath a table for a pen that escaped to the floor and bumped his head when the ringing began anew. 

He didn’t expect to hear his neighbor on the other line. Apparently his wife was feeling a bit under the weather so they drove her to a clinic down the street. Fortunately, everything was fine and they were just preparing to leave but she said there was something she needed to tell her husband that simply could not wait. 

Grimmer held the phone closer to his ear upon hearing her speak. 

She was pregnant. 

He was speechless. But this was okay. They planned for this. They had been trying for this. She wanted a family and from the outset he did too but now those aspirations would soon exist in reality. 

To celebrate, he left work a little earlier than usual. 

According to a recent opinion piece in the local paper, the worst part about reading people is sifting through mixed signals. Grimmer agreed. Whenever he was in his office, chipping away at assignments and reading books on child development, his wife complained, making comments about how absentminded and aloof he could be. But once he’d reschedule to spend more time with her, she’d say she didn’t want to be bothered. 

Grimmer wasn’t sure if her words were hurtful or not but from his coworkers reactions to his stories, he saw they could be interpreted as such. 

She was just moody and emotional. Common knowledge predicted such behavior as a result of hormonal imbalance but maybe the baby made her that way. A capricious mother and a cranky baby. That’s what Grimmer had to look forward to in the coming months. The thought made him laugh. 

Maybe being moody wasn’t so bad. He’d rather deal with a healthy level of neuroticism than the dull muted shell that appeared to be his personality. 

“I hope the baby is born with a good temperament,” he murmured to himself, finishing the last page of an essay on Attachment Theory. 

“Like his father’s?” she asked. She was standing in the doorway, watching with tired eyes. He shook his head. 

“No. Like yours.” He may have sounded sarcastic but that wasn’t his intention. 

“You’ve been in here for quite some time. Are you going to join me for dinner?”

“Did you make your mother’s potato soup?” 

“Just how you like it.” He smiled. 

“Then I’ll be there soon. Less than 5 minutes, I promise.” 

“Okay. I set the table too so when you’re done-”

“I’ll wash the dishes,” he finished. _“I know.”_

After filing the essay and annotated notes away, he stood up from the rocking chair a bit too fast and encountered a brief but intense wave of dizziness, a sign he required more sleep. He sighed. That problem would only worsen once the little one was here. 

He stared back at his reflection in the mirror of the nursery room. 

He couldn’t believe it but that was the face of a man who would become a father. The sight of himself only made him want to study harder but he decided against it. No more books. He had a large enough library in his house and in his mind. It was time to face life with something more genuine than books and dissertations. He needed to find some way to trust, no, to _believe_ in himself. 

There was still so much to learn and yet, Grimmer needed to have faith in all the knowledge he acquired from the moment he chose to reintegrate into society to now. 

In that room, in front of that mirror, Grimmer pledged to give his son the world he could never have. 

When the child arrived and Grimmer held him for the first time, something faint came to him like a ghost in a waking dream. It was indescribably warm yet extinguished faster than he hoped. 

This was life in his hands. So fragile. His own blood flowed through the veins of soft flesh. Wispy tufts of ashen blond hair covered his small head. This was supposed to be a father’s happiest day. He should feel happy. Blissful. _Overjoyed._

He should feel something. He did but it refused to stay with him and he wanted it back. 

Brief flashes of Kinderheim bombarded his thoughts and he grimaced.

If he couldn’t feel he could at least try to change love from a state of being into a type of action. He vowed to protect this child, no, _his_ child, with all the power he possessed so he would never have to bear the weight of the cross affixed to his father’s back. He promised to reverse fear with confidence. To counter hatred with compassion. 

4 months. 3 weeks. 5 days. 

Unlike most of his memories, Grimmer could recall the day with striking detail. It was 10:32am. Time to eat. He considered taking one of the bottles out of the fridge beforehand but something instinctual made him check on the baby first. The nursery room was quiet and nothing seemed out of the ordinary aside from the fact that the baby was sleeping for longer than anticipated. On the surface, everything seemed fine but when Grimmer peered into the crib and slowly placed a hand on his child, the atmosphere turned bleak. 

The baby did not move in response to his father’s touch. 

The child did not open his eyes when he called out his name over and over again and then the reality of the situation hit him. 

His son stopped breathing. 

The son for whom they’d dedicate their lives left the world faster than he entered it. 

Grimmer did everything he was supposed to do in a time like that, without hesitation. He performed CPR. He called 911. He sat in the ambulance, explaining everything he knew to the paramedics with the utmost precision.

He did everything he was supposed to do but cry. 

His wife was a wreck at the funeral but it would be unfair to single her out in the sea of family members and colleagues who shared in her misery. Grimmer knew that a parent burying their child was unnatural.. It was an affliction without mercy where bereavement should have appeared to him as if it had no end in sight.. This day marked the apex of agony and yet all he could do, like his wife said before they got married was watch from the outside of a realm he found no place in. 

White petals gathered at Grimmer’s feet while his wife clung to him in a fit of despair. Despite all his practice of mimicking reactions and feigning emotions, in the greatest testament of human suffering, he failed. Despite all the pain that constantly crept into his life, he could not mourn his greatest loss. His apathy defied human understanding. He wished he could collapse onto his knees to empty out his soul but he couldn’t. 

His wife pulled away to see the neutral void in his eyes and questioned if he even had one. 

Her words cut into his being like a sword into flesh that could be stabbed but would not bleed. She cursed him for his detachment. For his inability to grieve. For tricking her into believing he was someone that actually cared about her, or their son, or anything or anyone. 

An apology would be useless but with her, the silence was always worse. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

The words to give an answer were stuck in a place he couldn’t reach.

“What’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you crying? Why can’t you cry?”

He wasn’t sure.

“I should’ve known better. You’ve always been like this.”

He had been and he hated it. 

“You didn’t love him just like you don’t love me! You never did because you’re not capable of love and I should’ve known that but why would you do this then? Why would you do this to me?”

He didn’t know. 

“Say something dammit!! Anything!!”

He tried to put an arm around her but she pushed him away. Without any more words between the two of them, the message was clear. 

She never wanted to see him again. 

They got divorced. 

As a reporter, Grimmer travels on occasion but he knows that no matter how far he may roam he will never escape his past. It’s not like he wanted to anyway. He wanted to confront it all but nearly all of his photos and books were destroyed in the moving process. That was okay. They didn’t help him back then so he couldn’t imagine them doing much good now. 

Sometimes he’d have dreams about his marriage like one long episode of memoirs that shouldn’t exist. He didn’t like how easily the images haunted his subconscious but it always left him wondering the exact same thing. 

If he was someone who didn’t know how to love, who couldn’t love…

If he was someone who had nothing in his heart, then why…

Why on earth was he having such a hard time letting go? 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> im gonna go lie down for awhile now. don't mind me. my eyes are just kinda sweating.


End file.
